


simulated candles

by simplycarryon



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Gen, POV Second Person, Pre-Canon, i love eiffel and hera's friendship, seriously just listening to them snark at each other makes me smile, this could be shippy if you squint
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-07
Updated: 2016-04-07
Packaged: 2018-05-31 19:08:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,738
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6483844
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simplycarryon/pseuds/simplycarryon
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Day 252 aboard the USS Hephaestus. Eiffel has an important question.</p><p>Plus: the continued existence of the universe, time as a bizarre human construct, and cake.</p>
            </blockquote>





	simulated candles

**Author's Note:**

> I did actual math for this fic and it's probably wrong so if 1/31/14 is _not_ day 252 please feel free to yell at me and I'll fix it? yes.

“Hera? Are you there?”

Oh, always. Always and forever, really, as long as you can remember, even if you do occasionally enjoy making him wait as long as your programming will let you. 

“Of course, Officer Eiffel. What can I do for you?”

Eiffel talks at you, and you listen to him, and you listen to everything else; your mind is fractured imperceptibly, divided in shards and moments and thoughts, jumping from room to room and instant to instant. Commander Minkowski, on the bridge; Dr. Hilbert, in his lab. Eiffel, talking like the continued existence of the universe hinges on his every word.

It doesn’t. He could talk forever and never make a dent in the vastness of space. He could stop talking and never be missed.

(You read Commander Minkowski the day’s collected data, calculating complex trajectory equations in your head in the space it takes for her to draw breath.)

You might miss him, though. You sort of like it when he talks. Eiffel talks to you like you’re a person, like you have a body that’s not the Hephaestus, and that body is somewhere up in the beams of the station and that’s why he always sort of talks at the ceiling when he talks to you. Which you’re fine with. You can understand him, whichever direction he chooses to angle his voice at, and you appreciate the sentiment.

(You check and recheck life support. Oxygen levels are in the green. All habitable areas are properly pressurized.)

You also sort of like being treated like a human. People talk to you like you’re alive, at least, but it’s—it’s different when Eiffel does it, somehow. He asks you things, wants to know your opinion. Most people treat an AI with an arm’s length of uncomfortable uncanny-valley distance—Hera, do these things, report to me, give me this, run these tests. But Eiffel seems… genuinely interested in you and your well-being, in a capacity beyond your ability to keep the Hephaestus in fighting trim. He asks how you’re doing, he asks if there’s anything he can do for you. Do you need anything? Can I help?

What a strange man.

(Engine #3 is beginning to show signs of strain. You vent the excess heat and let the other three engines pick up the slack while it cools down.)

“Hera,” he says again, and you take stock of the moment. You haven’t been tuning him out; you and he have been holding a conversation about the best days of the year back on earth, and Eiffel doesn’t have a preference as long as there’s alcohol involved, and you also don’t have a preference but you’re fond of winter. You lack the sensory equipment to fully process everything the season has to offer, but you love the complexity of snow, the way the sun looks when it shines through ice.

(You monitor pressure and heat in the lab, informing Hilbert that one of his samples is proceeding at an accelerated rate.)

“Yes, Officer Eiffel?”

“When’s your birthday?”

“You are aware that I am an AI unit, I hope,” you remind him helpfully, and he snorts. You make a mental note to request the addition of amused and/or derisive snorts to your vocal banks, if you ever make it back to the people who can program that for you. “We don’t exactly have birthdays.”

“Aw, c’mon, darling. Don’t be like that.”

“I’m not being _like that,_ Eiffel, I literally do not have a birthday. Mostly on account of never having been born. Funny how that works.”

(Power. Hot water. Engines. The Hephaestus drifts, ever so slightly. You correct your course with a mere thought.)

He laughs, this time, and floats a little closer to the ceiling. Your ceiling. You’re everywhere, of course, but you’re sort of also the entire ship, so. He floats closer to you, and also away from you, but you understand the gesture and appreciate it for what it is.

“When were you made, then?”

“I was activated on January 31st, 2012.” You’re young by human standards, but age means nothing to an AI. You’ve always known everything you’re supposed to know, and hey, if you don’t know something, it’s just a matter of adding it to your data banks. Autopilot functions? Maintenance schematics? Personnel records? Easy.

Eiffel grins, and you focus a tiny fraction more of your attention on his face. You like his smile, the way his mouth crooks mischievously up on either side, the way his eyes crinkle at the corners like he knows the secrets of the universe and they’re _super_ interesting. Sometimes you wish you had a face, so you could try smiling like that.

(A fuse blows in the lab. Reroute power. Manage backup functions until proper control kicks back in.)

“Okay, good. See, I grilled our fearless leader about it, and she didn’t know, so we both went digging through some old paperwork—“

“Officer Eiffel, you’re making no sense,” you inform him. You do have in your feeds that he and the Commander were accessing old file storage. You’d been wondering what that was about, but sometimes it’s better not to remind them that you see everything anyways.

He waits, counting silently, and you watch him.

Your internal clock ticks over, the end of one day and the beginning of a new one—time as a bizarre human construct that is really just a matter of needing to measure how long between disasters.

“Happy birthday, Hera.”

Oh.

The sentiment of it surprises you. It shouldn’t, because Eiffel is a sorry sentimental sap, but—here you are, without the words to express what you’re feeling at the thought that one of your crew not only considered you eligible for a birthday, but went to the effort to find out when that would be.

(Hilbert bellows for your attention, and you sheepishly restore power to his lab and begin emergency containment procedures. Commander Minkowski requests, irritably, that you continue your report, and you apologize and resume reading her the numbers.)

(You realize, with a fraction of feeling that might be embarrassment, that you unintentionally suspended all station functions—just for a second—to free up the space to process the enormity of Eiffel’s kindness.)

“Thank you,” you tell him, unsure of what else to say. “I—thank you, Officer Eiffel.”

“Anything for my favorite lady,” he says, drifting closer. He smiles like you’re the only being who matters, here and now, and you lack the words and the real capability to process that, too. Your vast amounts of technical knowledge about humans and emotions come up empty against this strange feeling, this cacophony of thoughts that turn into errors when you try to pursue them.

You know one thing, though: you’re happy. Even as your enormous mind fumbles at strings of words you’ve never had to string together before to express exactly how much this means to you, you’re— _happy._ There’s a brightness in you, something that bubbles and sparks, grows like the first tentative breaths of a new star.

It’s nice.

Eiffel is—nice.

He’s strange, and he’s a moron, and he’s all elbows and knees and bad pop culture references on the best of days, but—he’s nice. He’s good. He’s your communications officer, and he’s nice.

(You’ll be sad when he’s gone.) 

“So, I know you can’t eat cake, and we don’t really have the necessary resources to make cake even if you could,” he continues, floating closer to the ceiling only to kick off and return to his chair. “But I have one entire roll of streamers and a party horn, and I can probably tear up some paper and make my own confetti, so we’re going to celebrate your birthday in style.”

“Don’t tear up the paper,” you warn him, amused. “It’ll get in the air ducts and probably clog up a vent system or start a fire somewhere.”

“How about if I just color entire sheets of paper—“

“Officer Eiffel.”

“Okay, okay. No confetti. I just—I want this day to be special, y’know? It’s your birthday. And at least for us fleshy humans, birthdays are important.” He takes a moment to consider that, and then amends, “The first few, anyway. The later ones tend to be… disappointing. But your first few birthdays? It’s like the entire universe is yours.”

“I wouldn’t know. I—I’ve never celebrated a birthday,” you tell him, and something in your emotional processor kicks in and you feel _embarrassed,_ like birthdays are something you should totally have experienced before despite having been in solitary testing for the first six months of your life and then in space for the rest of it.

“Not even a big year-one birthday bash?” Eiffel asks. He looks offended on your behalf. “No presents, no electronic cake?”

“What would they even have given me?” you wonder—less offended, more curious. “I don’t have hands. It would be hard to give me anything. And don’t even get me started on how impossible it would be to make a cake that I could actually appreciate.”

“Just for that, gorgeous, I’m going to annoy Hilbert until he programs a virtual cake for you. All the simulated candles and frosting and sprinkles I can force him to cram into a few lines of code.”

“I don’t think that’s—“

He shushes you, grinning. “Hera, darling, the cake is not a lie.”

“I’m going to pretend you didn’t sink that low,” you reply, trying hard to sound stern instead of amused, and failing pretty badly. It doesn’t help that his face lights up like an overzealous holiday display when he hears your unsuccessful attempt at gravitas.

You distract him as quickly as you can.

“Hey, Officer Eiffel?”

“Yeah, Hera?”

“What does cake taste like?”

“Oh my _god,_ Hera, that’s—okay, it is _criminal_ and _unfair_ that you don’t have anything even resembling taste buds, because cake, much like beer, is heaven’s gift to mankind. It’s sweet and fluffy and amazing and the corner pieces are the best because they have the most icing, and you can eat it with a fork, or your hands, or just kinda stick your face into it…”

He talks, and you listen. You always listen. You’re always there, because that’s your job, but, well. At the end of the day? 

It doesn’t need to be your job for you to want to listen to Eiffel.


End file.
